Lewis Hamilton claimed his first win for Ferrari by controlling the Shanghai sprint race from pole.
Hamilton got the perfect getaway to avoid any challenge into the long and tightening first turn, cementing his lead as the pack punched out of the downhill Turn 3.
Max Verstappen followed Hamilton out, but behind him Oscar Piastri and Charles Leclerc were scuffling for third. Leclerc found himself on the inside of Turn 3 but got the poorer exit, allowing the Australian to hold his place with better traction.
Piastri wasn’t the only McLaren in action, however, with teammate Lando Norris, starting sixth, initiating a scrap for fifth with George Russell. He briefly found himself ahead out of Turn 3 but was forced to fall back into line, and an attempt to get around the Mercedes’s outside at Turn 6 then ended in disaster, with the McLaren dipping its left wheels onto the dirt and slithering briefly off track. That freed Russell to target Charles Leclerc, whom he passed easily at the end of the long back straight for fourth.
The early positioning was critical. Pirelli had raised the minimum tire pressures overnight to cope with the grippy new track surface, which was baked to near 100 degrees F for the sprint, forcing drivers into a phase of management to ensure their medium tires could make it to the checkered flag.
The gaps between the top three waxed and waned as they grappled with the required management. By lap 10 Piastri was clearly the driver with the deft touch. He began to apply pressure to Verstappen, forcing the Dutchman to watch his papaya-filled mirrors rather than the scarlet Ferrari ahead.
The first parry came at the beginning of lap 14, when Verstappen forced Piastri into an impossible attempt around his outside at the first turn. It was a costly maneuver for the Dutchman, however.
“Both of my front tires are dead,” he lamented as Piastri lined him up for a second attempt.
The Australian wouldn’t miss with his second attempt on lap 15 of 19. Getting a superb run out of Turn 13, he used DRS to draw alongside the Red Bull Racing car and pit it to the outside of the turn, depriving him of second place.
It was music to Hamilton’s ears. With the benefit of clear air the Briton used the battle for second place to open up his lead. By the time Piastri moved into second, he was already 2.7s up the road, a margin he stretched by another second the following lap.
Hamilton cruised to the checkered flag with a comfortable 6.8s margin to claim his first win in red and his and Ferrari’s first ever sprint victory.
“I woke up feeling great today,” he said. “From lap 1 here this weekend I was really feeling on it.
“We’ve done a great job. The engineers have done a great job. the mechanics have done a great job to really fine-tune the car. It felt great today.”
Piastri was satisfied to claim second and validate his car’s strong tire management, which bodes well for the longer grand prix on Sunday.
“I think it was a really productive sprint,” he said. “I think I really learned a lot in that one.
“As much as the result is a nice thing, the way I got the result was an encouraging thing. We didn’t quite have enough pace for Lewis out front, but I think we’ve got some good ideas for [qualifying] this afternoon and tomorrow, and we’ll see if we can go one spot better.”
Verstappen described his race as a battle for survival, saying he was lucky to hold third after his tires began falling apart.
“Unfortunately, I think the last eight laps we just didn’t have the pace of the others — I was just trying to survive out there, so I’ll definitely take that P3,” he said. “Even the cars behind were catching up a lot [in the end].
“In general I think we just lack a bit of overall pace. You push a bit harder, you kill your tires a bit more, so that makes it difficult.”
Russell spent the final two laps sternly defending Leclerc to hold fourth ahead of the Ferrari. The Monegasque complained that his car was “undrivable” through the crucial Turn 13, the long right-hander leading onto the back straight, leaving him unable to capitalize on the track’s best overtaking spot at the hairpin.
Yuki Tsunoda jumped two places on the first lap — one off the line and another thanks to the errant Norris — and did admirably to hold the place ahead of the much faster Mercedes of Andrea Kimi Antonelli.
Norris spent most of the Sprint outside the points and complaining that his tires were cooked while running in the midfield, but Lance Stroll ahead of him was about to struggle more, dropping into the McLaren’s clutches in the final laps. It was a clinical pass for the championship leader in the end, passing with DRS into the hairpin to score the final point of the race.
Stroll finished ninth ahead of teammate Fernando Alonso, Alex Albon, Pierre Gasly and Isack Hadjar.
Liam Lawson recovered from 19th on the grid to 14th with some elbows-out overtaking at the hairpin, making contact with Jack Doohan and Gabriel Bortoleto and losing some bodywork as a result.
Haas teammates Oliver Bearman and Esteban Ocon followed ahead of Carlos Sainz, who was the only driver in the field to make a pit stop.
Bortoleto finished 18th ahead of Sauber teammates Nico Hulkenberg and Alpine rookie Jack Doohan.
Doohan’s race ended with him pointing in the wrong direction at the hairpin after tagging Bortoleto in a clumsy overtaking attempt.
